Sina Temesgen Tolera ^* Bezatu Alemu Dechasa Adare Mengistu Alemayehu Deressa

• College of Health and Medical Sciences, Haramaya University, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia

Introduction: Emerging evidence in both developed and developing countries indicate that occupational health related respiratory diseases among sanitary workers constitute a significant public health challenge. These is because of the working environment, employees are more likely to be at risk in an unsafe workplace, especially sanitary workers. Thus, the purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to estimate occupational related respiratory diseases among sanitary workers.: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) was used as flow diagram and Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome and Study type (PICOS) was used review questions. The studies published in English were searched from databases and others methods ranging from 2000 to 2022. Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT), MeSH, and keywords used:(Occupational "OR" Job "OR" Work) AND (Respiratory track diseases "OR" Respiratory tract infections "OR" Respiratory track symptoms "OR" Respiratory track problems) AND (Solid waste collectors "OR" Sewage workers "OR" Street sweepers "OR" Waste treatment worker) AND Countries. Stata software MP/17 was used to data analysis. The random-effect model and Restricted Maximum Likelihood was used. Generic precomputed effect size for prevalence of occupational related respiratory diseases was employed at confidence interval (CI:95%).Results: A total of 23 studies from industrialized (n = 4) and developing countries (n = 7) eligible from 123 studies. Of 4521 sanitary workers, 1990 (44%), 1651 (37%), and 880 (19%) of them were SS, SWCs, and STWs, respectively. Globally, the pooled prevalence of occupational related respiratory diseases among all SWs was 32.56% (95%CI: 25.78%,39.34%). Among those, highincome and low-income countries accounted for 20% (95%CI:18.08%,0.21.96%) and 35.17% (95%CI: 27.48%, 42.76%), respectively. In the SS and SWC groups, it was 36.41% (95%CI: 26.69%) and 31.28% (95%CI: 18.64%, 43.92%), respectively.The current systematic review and meta-analysis found that occupational associated respiratory illnesses were common among SWs. Due to numerous risk factors, it is prevalent in low-income countries than in industrialized ones. Therefore, in order to reduce these risks for these groups-especially for street sweepers in low-income countries-government policy changes and other actions are required.